My friend thinks my images of Jesus are meaningless

Hello Mason and Teo,

My family and I receive and enjoy the Hawaii Catholic Herald and reading your column. A few weeks ago a childhood friend and I were having lunch and sharing our feelings on religion. I was born and raised in the Catholic faith. My friend considers herself as a “Christian.” She fellowships with all “Christian” churches.

My husband has collected pictures of Jesus and Bibles through the years. He has over a dozen pictures and Bibles he’s found at garage sales and other places. He’s come to treasure them.

I told my friend about my husband’s collection and was shocked by her response: “I don’t have any pictures of Jesus nor do I want any because we don’t really know how he looks.”

I could feel myself getting angry. I said, “Well, my pictures and visions of Jesus are the only ones I know. This beautiful picture I have in my memory was instilled in me since I was old enough to pray.”

She nodded her head as if knowing how strongly I felt. Did I overreact? Is she right? Is this true? Should I have responded differently? I value your opinion and look forward to hearing from you. (Saving Face)

Dear Saving Face,

Thank you for your confidence in our ministry. Personally, we believe you handled the situation quite well. We, too, would defend something that we are passionate about.

Each person is uniquely made and has life experiences that form one to see things differently. We must respect the freedom of others to assent to the truth as they understand it. However, we cannot refrain from practicing or defending the faith. Such moments are a good opportunity to share Christ.

Amazingly, the face of Jesus is one of the most recognizable in the world, yet no one today really knows what he looked like. Nevertheless, our vocation in life is to draw near to Christ and to see his loving face.

As the Word becomes flesh in John 1:14, no longer was God invisible. No longer was the Lord hidden within a “mystery cloud.” We now have a human face of God revealed in Jesus Christ who joined us in our struggle to live in holiness and who won victory over sin and death.

In John 14:9, Jesus says, “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.” If Christ is the sacrament of God, then the church is the Sacrament of Christ. The church’s sole purpose is to make present and to reveal the face of Christ to every person.

We can see the face of Christ in the infant Jesus. When we gaze on the face of baby Jesus, we see the human face of the Eternal Son of God, full of beauty and truth that is infinitely beyond words.

We can see the face of Christ in the suffering Jesus. We see the expression of incomparable grief and spiritual pain because of his love for us. We witness Christ clinging to the Father who loves him for offering his life as a gift. We discover that in imitating Christ’s self-emptying we become a gift for our own salvation as well as for our neighbor’s growth into holiness.

And we can see the face of Christ transfigured. Dwelling on the mountain with the Lord and contemplating his radiant face becomes a foretaste of our future reunion with the beloved of our heart’s longing. When Jesus comes again in glory at the end of time, he “will change our lowly bodies to be like his own in glory” (1Corinthians 15:53-54).

A lifetime of turning to the face of Christ and allowing his mysterious power to reshape us from within will move our hearts to become increasingly open to the supernatural virtues of faith, hope and love that keeps the divine flame alive in our hearts.

“All of us, gazing with unveiled face on the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, as from the Lord who is the Spirit” (2Corinthians 3:18). Moving from glory to glory helps us to see clearly the role we are to play in God’s plan for the small part of the world in which we live in and for the local church in which we live out our faith.

In essence, every human face reveals the presence of divine beauty, the splendor of the face of God, who is all light and love. Our real face is not the aspect we show others. Rather, it is the image of our moral personality in its response to be faithful to who we truly are and what we should become that is the resemblance of Christ.